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Wednesday, June 06, 2007

It's pretty much common wisdom that whoever the Democratic nominee is in '08, they'll run against George W. Bush's record, not whoever the GOP nominates. If this is true, then the best thing Republicans could do for dems would be to nominate someone as identical as possible to Bush -- and they have that opportunity. That candidate is the all but declared Fred Thompson.

As an undeclared candidate, Thompson wasn't included in last nights GOP debate in New Hampshire, but FOX News made sure he got some air time with an appearance on Hannity & Colmes.

On Iraq, he's actually worse than Bush. He's Dick Cheney.

I mean, [Saddam] had those plans [to develop nuclear weapons]. He had the technical expertise. Whether he had them on one particular day or not is almost irrelevant. Especially today, looking at what Iran is doing, he certainly would have had his hands or been working assiduously toward getting the capability of nuclear weapons. And that's what we would have been faced with had we not done that. Going in there and deposing him was a good thing.

Of course, Fred's a lying sack -- just like Dick when he says the same sort of thing. Here's equal time for reality:

Today, 18 months after the invasion of Iraq, investigators there have found no evidence of hidden centrifuges or a revived nuclear weapons program. The absence of unconventional weapons in Iraq is now widely seen as evidence of a profound intelligence failure, of an intelligence community blinded by "group think," false assumptions and unreliable human sources.

It's kind of hard to say that Hussein planned to revive his nuclear program when he didn't have the stuff to do it -- 'the technical expertise,' as Thompson put it. If Thompson came right out and said what he was doing -- reading dead Saddam Hussein's mind -- everyone would think he's a crackpot. So he says it like there's some evidence of it. In any case, in Thompson's own arguably living mind, invading Iraq was a great idea.

Of course, that doesn't put him at odds with most of the rest of the GOP field, it just puts him in a position that's incredibly easy to shoot down. All of Dick Cheney's agruments have been out there for a long time and, at this point, all the legwork in debunking them has already been done. Fred would be wiser to cook up some fresher BS.

But you got a situation here where they knew shortly after they started this fiasco that no crime had been committed. What they were looking at didn't constitute a crime, because of the status of Valerie Plame. She wasn't a covered person under the statute. Then they found out that he didn't -- Scooter Libby didn't leak her name. Richard Armitage over at the State Department did that, but they still kept digging and digging, because the press expected the special prosecutor to come up with somebody in the Bush administration.

That's just a lie. There's almost no other way to put it. If I wanted to be charitable, I'd have to say Thompson is ignorant, which is hardly any better. According to MSNBC, "An unclassified summary of outed CIA officer Valerie Plame's employment history at the spy agency, disclosed for the first time today in a court filing by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, indicates that Plame was 'covert' when her name became public in July 2003." The actual CIA employment report is here (PDF).

Like I say, Thompson may or may not be ignorant, but he's sure hoping you are.

Thompson seems intent on repeating every idiotic mistake Bush has made. As I posted a few days ago, he's hiring from within the Alberto Gonzales prosecutor purge scandal. The person he's hiring shows Thompson's commitment to democracy -- he doesn't have any. He ran a scheme to strike legit Democratic voters from voter lists.

If we go down the list, Thompson is Bush. Abortion, stem cell research, global warming, Iran, the White House as corporate stooge, kissing the butt of the religious right, etc. -- all Bush positions.

If Thompson does manage to get the nomination, I've got a great idea. We buy up a bunch of 'Bush/Cheney '08' gear off eBay (I can't imagine it'd be very expensive), go to Thompson events with it, and chant, "Four more years! Four more years!"